Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Wow, I'm back! It has really been a long time since I posted and I'm going to post on a trip that we took 2 and a half years ago!! That is how far behind on life I am right now. Well, my blogging life anyway. First off, I want to say that it's been a productive 2 1/2 years off for this website. I was just able to upload 180 pictures, all at once, in less than 5 min. That's a huge improvement! It used to be you could only upload 5 pics at a time and that would take 5 min. With the huge leap forward, I might just have to blog more than once every 2 1/2 years. I'm going to do my best to remember this trip... but not to be redundant here... it was 2 1/2 years ago!

Day 1 (6/23/11):

﻿

So here we are, our first and how exciting, a herd of bison!!! We thought it was exciting at the time, and we had to hurry and pull over to see the herd. Turns out, they are EVERYWHERE in Yellowstone and you can't be in the park for 5 minutes without seeing bison somewhere.

Um yeah, what is going on back there is exactly what it looks like. LOL!

Our first hot spring/geyser. I know that on the first day we went to the Lower Geyser Basin, Fountain Paint Pot & Black Sand Basin. However, I don't know if that was the order that we went in and what pictures are of what. I obviously waited way too long to try and figure it out now. And to make things more interesting, looks like somewhere in the picture uploading process, they got put in out of order. Awesome.

Of course, we had to take a picture of the Danger sign for Tommy. He still hasn't outgrown his love of various Danger signs.

Here's our first sighting of Old Faithful.

Another couple of Danger signs for Tommy.

Day 2 (6/24)

On day 2 we went to Gibbon Falls, Monument Geyer Basin (which was a lengthy and steep hike in the heat of the day. In our infinite parenting wisdom, Eric and I decided we didn't need to take water because the description of the hike lead us to believe it was a very short one. Turned out it was definitely a long and difficult climb without water. Tommy was a trooper, mostly without complaint, but Syrena let us know that not taking water was a real mistake... about a hundred times. The guy with the snake was a professor and he talked to the kids for a little bit about the snake and the area. We took these pictures of him with the intent of emailing them to him, but since it took me so long to get these uploaded that never happened, oops!) . We also went to Artists Paint Pots and the Norris Geyser Basin. I don't know if some of those pictures are above or speckled throughout the rest of these pictures.

Love that sulphur smell!!

Unknown tracks of some kind... bear? If so, that was the closest we ever got to seeing one on this trip.

Day 3 (6/25)

Grand Teton National Park.

Syrena insisted that we take the drive to the Tetons and I'm so glad she did. They are beautiful!

We went to Jenny Lake and took this ferry across the lake to get to a famed hike up to Hidden Falls.

Here's the Hidden Falls :)

On the way back we decided to take a long hike/walk around the lake rather than ride the Ferry again. This is a moose we spotted in a pond.

On our way back we stopped at the Continental Divide. Mostly because I remembered going there when I was a kid when my grandparents took me and my cousin.

Here is the last picture of day 3, an elk we spotted next to a river we were walking alongside.

The rest of these pictures are all out of order. I tried putting them in order, but it's really just too big of a mess. On day 4 (6/26), we saw a wolf (I think the pictures of the wolf are in here somewhere) and a fox. We also went to the Mammoth Terraces (Tommy kept calling them terrances, which was way cute and we all loved it), the Mammoth visitor center, Undine falls & Tower falls. Again, not sure in what order we saw those and not sure what order the pictures are in.

These are definitely the terraces...

There was this huge herd of elk at the Mammoth visitor center. We had the crappiest camera at time and most of my pictures of the elk did not turn out.

This is a petrified tree... Syrena and Eric couldn't help a hammy pose of them being "petrified" in front of it - that's the picture below:

Here's that fox I said we saw :)

Here we are on Mt. Washburn, there was still some snow. Syrena obliged with my requests for pictures, but Tommy was not as compliant.

It seemed like it took forever to get anywhere in the park, there were constant traffic jams which were 90% caused by bison like this one.

Here's that wolf we saw, he seemed to be enjoying a lovely deer carcass.

Day 5 (6/27)

On this day we saw the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, back part of Norris Geyser Basin, the Upper and Lower falls, Uncle Tom's Trail, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Lake, Sulpher (I have no idea how to spell that and spell check has no idea either) Cauldron and the mud volcanoes.

I just loved these lone trees out there growing on a rock in the middle of the river.

This is the Old Canyon Bridge - it used the be the bridge that everyone drove on. Look at the picture below with Eric and Tommy on it, you can see how narrow it is. The old days were a lot different from now. We stopped and ate lunch here and enjoyed the spectacular view.

This is Uncle Tom's Trail, to get the bottom of the upper falls (I think... maybe it's to get to the bottom of the lower falls). It is just this HUGE staircase on the side of a cliff that goes forever. It made me a little dizzy to be on it.

Here is Yellowstone Lake.

A nest of some sort atop this tree.

Day 6 (6/28)

We went back to Old Faithful one more time. We also went to Fairy Falls, Midway Geyser (with Grand Prismatic Spring, the biggest hot spring in the world if I remember right... which is questionable), Firehole Lake Drive and Firehole Canyon Drive.

This is Fairy Falls....

Everywhere we went, we saw hats in the springs. If you are going to wear a hat to Yellowstone, wear it tight or wear one with a chinstrap.

These are pictures that Eric took, and he was smart enough to take a picture of the signs as well.... I totally should have been doing that whole time. Duh!

This is Great Fountain Geyser. I think.

Here is a herd of bison that walked right alongside the car. Our windows were down and Tommy was scared to death. No doubt all those warning signs had made their proper impact with him. This was it, after we made our way out of the herd, we then made our way out of the park. It was a fun trip!

On the Nightstand:

I am currently reading:

What the Bleep Do We Know?

It's a follow up to the amazing movie; it will definitely get you thinking. I just finished American Psycho... a good book but also a bit disturbing. As I read more I will give a better description of it.